saw something tonite on PBS about the US march to tokyo through all those islands in WWII and how the japanese civilians thought we were going to eat their babies and so they all jumped off cliffs. women, children, babies. i can't believe they did that. they said that the propellors of our boats got clogged from all the bodies in the water. my father-in-law was stationed on those islands. no wonder he never wanted to eat sushi. and was really grumpy. it's just so sad to think about.
twoharts wrote: scary powerful. it has happened before. maybe it could happen again.
Rest assured that it will (actually it already has - remember those so-called WMD in Iraq that led our nation to war?). But the country was young with god on it's side.
In Okinawa at the northern most point there are cliffs. It is said that many Okinawans jumped off the cliffs. The Okinawans were afraid of the Americans as much as they were afraid of the Japanese.
The Japanese were not very nice during that time period
A Lester II wrote: In Okinawa at the northern most point there are cliffs. It is said that many Okinawans jumped off the cliffs. The Okinawans were afraid of the Americans as much as they were afraid of the Japanese.
The Japanese were not very nice during that time period
IIRC they used to have "contests" to see how many people could be beheaded
not our finest hour IMHO and i can't believe colin powell went to the UN and said that. i remember watching tv and thinking "ok, this is the place where they'll find all that stuff and we won't look like idiots" if we needed to go they should have just gone and not tried to trump up some reason like that for it.
Lohkee wrote: Rest assured that it will (actually it already has - remember those so-called WMD in Iraq that led our nation to war?). But the country was young with god on it's side.
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A Lester II wrote: In Okinawa at the northern most point there are cliffs. It is said that many Okinawans jumped off the cliffs. The Okinawans were afraid of the Americans as much as they were afraid of the Japanese.
The Japanese were not very nice during that time period
The Japanese scared the Okinawans with horror stories about US soldiers and gave the civilians grenades to kill themselves with, then the Japanese soldiers fled.
Some Okinawans did kill themselves. Others waited and were treated decently by most US soldiers. A number of older Okinawans still hate the Japanese for the needless deaths of friends and family members.
The most famous, or infamous, example was Suicide Cliff in Saipan. The Japanese civilians of the island had been motivated by government propaganda. Some participated in banzai attacks. Over a thousand jumped off the north cliffs toward the end of the battle, and the massed bodies were floating in the ocean bekiw. It was pretty gruesome. About 29,000 Japanese troops and 20,000 civilians died on the island.
twoharts wrote: saw something tonite on PBS about the US march to tokyo through all those islands in WWII and how the japanese civilians thought we were going to eat their babies and so they all jumped off cliffs. women, children, babies. i can't believe they did that. they said that the propellors of our boats got clogged from all the bodies in the water. my father-in-law was stationed on those islands. no wonder he never wanted to eat sushi. and was really grumpy. it's just so sad to think about.
That's not quite what happened...from what *I HAVE* read anyhow.
A Lester II wrote: In Okinawa at the northern most point there are cliffs. It is said that many Okinawans jumped off the cliffs. The Okinawans were afraid of the Americans as much as they were afraid of the Japanese.
The Japanese were not very nice during that time period
If I recall correctly, Japanese soldiers forced them to jump and if they didn't they were shot.
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